Leela has gone vertical and its all fair game. Plus Brett brought home two cute kiddy sized chairs both of which she loves clambering on, and then ungainly falls off. He wants to take them away, and obviously, I would like a way to teach her to climb safely.

I am always with her and hovering, but I'd love it if there were a way to give her some safe climbing challenges where she could learn to climb safely (always keep three points firmly anchored kid!).

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

Oh god, I wish I knew. We've had so many visits/calls to the pediatrician/urgent care/ER/dentist for various injuries from falls in the past year since Lydia started climbing.

Finding a playground with appropriate climbing structures for your kid is always a good thing. Lydia is a much better climber from climbing all over at a playground near us that has a great small play structure for younger toddlers. And since the playground is covered in wood chips, falls usually aren't too bad.

We have kritter chairs from ikea in the playroom. At first it was a little scary, but after a few days V learned how to get on and off them safely. Philosophically, I generally think that it's better for kids to learn to be careful than to live in a padded world at all times, but we definitely act as her spotters when we go to playgrounds and things because she'll be climbing onto things right up there with the older kids.

we had hardwood floors and not much specially-made-for-kids when FC was mobile. you probably won't be too happy with how we dealt with climbing.

we fenced off radiators. that was non-negotiable. we also had a fishtank back then, we fenced off the area around the fishtank stand.power plug cover things, fridge lock, and later when we moved into a place with a galley kitchen, a kitchen gate to keep her out.

then, she was baptized "free range". fall and learn to get up. hard at first, but not really, when she fell she laughed and shook herself off and started again. my brother was the same way when he was that age, and it was just normal... "made him strong"-- Mr T and I both thought it shouldn't be any different for our girl.we did try to encourage her to jump onto cushions - instead of saying "no don't flip off the couch!" we said, "oh you want to jump, it's so much more fun if you flip on a cushion". our furniture was crepe, and her bed was a low kiddie bed, so there was no danger (she had no climbable furniture in her room, none.)

it took me a little bit to realize that i needed to keep shiitake put away if i didn't want it destroyed. A few kitchen cabinets were for her to dismantle. but everything else, we just tried to cover pointy corners if they were at possible eye level, and tried to just keep calm.

then we just let her rip! we only had one ER visit, and it was not due to falling. I *can* still remember to this day the first head banged against the wood floor, and i can still hear the coconut sound-- and it was horrid. but we were lucky, and i have always been proud of FC being able to get up again after going down- not just from walking or climbing, but from her bike, a horse, oh lordy, even a motorcycle but that was Mr T's fault, and i didn't approve of that one.

ETA: not saying that there's anything wrong with wanting to protect your kid or do it differently than we did. When I was parenting I was so knee-jerk reactive against the things I was hearing other people suggest and I realize now of course, in hindsight, that everyone has different levels of comfort with this kind of stuff. I had friends who said they couldn't let their kid just range wild [she was super active and strong, but wasn't constantly putting her life at risk, but i know my brother did, constantly, and i might have changed my tune if she broke as many bones as my brother did]; now I understand it doesn't have to be one or the other, or right or wrong, but back then I was still learning.

Oh yeah, that's important too-- doing what you can to make your environment safer for climbing by fencing off the really dangerous things as well as teaching boundaries. We don't fence off the bookshelf in the living room, but we do teach her that she is NOT allowed to climb on it. It's non-negotiable, she is not allowed to climb it, but we still attached the bookshelf to the wall so that if she ignored our rules she couldn't pull it over on herself.

We took a pretty similar approach to torque with E, who was a monster climber. Well, I did, and I was the person who was with him most of the time. (Solipsistnation would just pull him off of things or try to get me to do it, but I could not sustain that all day every day. We went to a lot of playgrounds and I let him climb on pretty much every play structure-- with me right there.

He's never been to the ER and has only ever had one noteworthy bad fall. And it wasn't on my watch, and he wasn't even climbing.

What torque said. Bookcases are fenced off (we moved them all to one area to just have one fence). She can now climb into her high chair, so we just let her do it when we're there and spot here and congratulate her at the end. We've taught her to follow commands to sit down (but sometimes she mocks us and stands up while pointing down and saying "sit down!") on dangerous objects. She has frequently gotten stuck climbing up something she can't get down, so we rescue her. It's so infrequent that she's in a room without one of us so nothing disastrous has been able to happen. She's only fallen off a couple of things so far and she's been climbing stairs and other things since 6 months. So far no injuries to speak of.

Oh, about bookshelves... We have too many to fence off reasonably, so our compromise has been to put kid-safe distractions on the lower shelves in front of the books. Stuffed animals, baby books, stuff like that. It works for my kids. They start playing with the toys/playing pull them all off and forget about climbing or messing with the books.

Yep, we let grey climb. He, too, has been climbing since before he could stand or crawl. He has fallen and we have had one trip to the ER. He is pretty rough and tumble and he gets pissed if we don't let him climb. We also have wood floors.

We took off the lower shelves from the un-blocked-off bookshelves. I also was finally motivated to bring like 10 boxes of books to work when she started going for the shelves, so we could reduce our bookshelf needs.

also, for bookshelves, they make these things that screw in (like a tension curtain rod) between the shelf and the ceiling, so the kid can't pull them over.

on the topic.... (my earliest memory is pulling a grandfather clock over on myself. my mother swears i was only about a year and a half old, but i can remember it, and i tell you, what i do remember is that my parents had the most amazing 70s interior decorating- turquoise rug, blue and white zebra couch, and this grandfather clock that somehow coordinated with that and some kind of gold glittery stuff)

We did tons of child proofing, and did TONS and TONS of super vigilant watching, and let Silas climb. He climbed long before crawling. 4 months old and climbed up his crib like a monkey and had his leg over about to fall out when I left him in there for a quick bathroom trip! He also did this adorable (horrifying) thing where he thought he could walk months before he could and would just try to step and fall a thousand times a day. Hed even try this after climbing onto furniturw. We have time floors and I have no idea how he managed to survive with no ER visits at all. Actually I have no idea how I survived this stage. The stress.

I don't really have any advice, but I know that I was a climber as a baby, and my mother is scared of heights, and she still talks about how difficult it was to let me climb things when she was terrified that I'd fall, because she knew that, if she stopped me from climbing, then I'd start being afraid of heights, too. It seemed to work -- I still love climbing, and have no fear of heights at all, and as far as I know, I've never had any concussions. It was also pretty useful for my mother when I was a bit older, and she needed something that she couldn't reach from the top shelf of a closet, she'd just ask me to get it, and I'd find some way to stack some chairs and climb the shelves to get it.)

My brother is the infamous climber in our family....my grandmother repeatedly told a story of him coming to visit (when he was under two) and within the first five minutes she realized he was on top of the refrigerator. Seriously.

He also tried to crawl up the side of a box spring that was leaning against a wall. My parents had just moved, so the bed wasn't put together yet. The box spring fell on top of him and his head ripped through the fabric. Luckily, he was not hurt and my mom manage to catch the mattress before it completely fell.

Babynut is a climber, but nothing that crazy yet. I'm just hovering for now, trying to find a balance between letting her find her way and having a mattress fall on her!

Ugh, ya know, for me it isn't even the climbing I worry about, it is the inevitable attempt to jump off whatever he scaled. I just keep picturing a failed landing and the consequent trip to urgent care.

My four year old wants bunk beds so bad, too. I just can't even...

_________________Gwyneth Paltrow: "I'm superstitious. Whenever I start a new movie I kill a hobo with a hammer."

Not really having to do with climbers - but that mattress post reminded me of a horrible fright I had while babysitting. I was probably 14 or 15 and totally didn't see the danger in that mattress the parents had left propped up against the wall. Well I left the kids in that room while I was fixing a snack. Came back in when I heard a weird "whump" noise and saw the 4 year old jumping up and down on the mattress that had fallen...and as I was trying to decide should I stop her from jumping or not I realized the smaller child (probably like a 18 month old was UNDER the mattress. Everyone was fine but I nearly died.

Sorry, it was meant as a little joke, not to be offensive. I think its great that you've found someone responsible and well trained to take care of Grey and of course teenagers are as capable of caring for infants as anyone else - its about the personality of the individual not the age.

Apologies to anyone I've offended.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.